Boy, did I miss the boat last year.
Those 20 million really freaked me out. I wonder if I can get hit stats like that again, and this time monetize.
In other news, I’ve busy this week. I’ve been spending evenings visiting a good friend who’s in the hospital with pneumonia.
…that you can see both my hands in the pachinko video?
I hereby claim a trademark on the MouthCam(tm).
…Never mind.
Last year at this time, I was getting tens of thousands of downloads, and it was seriously freaking me out. So far, the episodes I’ve made this year have a more reasonable listenership: somewhere around 1,000 plays per episode, but it takes a while for the numbers to get up there. The “Ass Hair Burger Festival,” which was the last episode I did in 2006, has been listened to over 4,000 times.
Video viewership is harder to calculate, but between my blog, iTunes and YouTube, the beach video, for example, has been watched over 6,000 times.
But you know what? I don’t feel it. There are maybe 10 people who post to the blog, and those are the people I imagine myself talking to, plus a few very close friends from real life and my parents in the US. Being a quite shy and private person (I kid you not, not in the least), unless I can learn how not to self-destruct when the numbers start getting too high, imagining only a few people listening in is the only way I can continue to do this stuff.
I admire people who can live without fear, or at least feel the fear but do it anyway. Coming to terms with what have always been my two greatests fears–criticism and failure–is the reason I started podcasting almost two years ago, and the reason why I still challenge myself despite very public setbacks. In fact, the repeating cycle of failing, being forgiven by listeners and trying again has helped to boost my confidence a little every time.
What am I getting at? Thanks for reaching out to me and helping me grow personally. I’m hoping that someday soon this experiment will evolve into something beyond just me, and into a community that will help people help each other become happy and successful. I have a few ideas germinating about this, but those ideas haven’t attracted the right people just yet. That’s the next thing I need to learn how to do.
What’s preventing Japanese or Korean manufacturers from selling their totally bitchin’ light-years-ahead mobile phones in the US? Why are US phones do darned crappy in comparison?
You know, I might have seen this magazine in a convenience store last weekend. I can’t remember which one or where. In fact, I’m pretty sure I did. I just didn’t give it much thought.
Even the title Gaijin Hanzai Ura Fairu (Foreigners Underground Crime File) uses an epithet for “foreigner” that’s offensive enough to be banned from broadcasts.
From Chiba Beat:
“It goes beyond being puerile and into the realm of encouraging hatred of foreigners,” Debito Arudou, a naturalised Japanese citizen, told the Guardian. “The fact that this is available in major bookstores is a definite cause of concern. It would be tantamount to hate speech in some societies.”
From Reuters:
“We wanted to take this up as a contemporary problem,” said Shigeki Saka of Tokyo-based publishers Eichi, which also publishes magazines on popular U.S. and South Korean television dramas. “I think it would be good if this becomes a chance to broaden the debate,” he added.
One caption in the magazine refers to a black man as “nigger.”
“This is not a racist book, because it is based on established fact,” Saka said. “If we wanted to be racist, we could write it in a much more racist way,” he added, saying that the word “nigger” was not considered offensive in Japan.
More articles:
debito.org
Japan Probe
Japan:Stippy
It was pulled from Amazon.co.jp I’ll look through the user reviews later.
You want my opinion? I’m glad it was published. Living in Japan is the only way a white male like myself can truly understand what it’s like to be on the receiving end of racial descrimination. I can say for certain there are plenty of Japanese who are disgusted by this kind of publication, just as there are whites in the US who believe in racial equality.
How did that word slip into the American vernacular and when? People who don’t know Japanese are using it on the web.
For those who don’t know, it means “relying on/letting someone else do it.”
e.g:
Me: “Who’s making dinner tonight?”
Wife: “Omakase.” (Short for omakase shimasu.)
Bloggers are using the term when they post information that originally came from readers.
Update: How foolish am I not to have checked Wikipedia first? Sushi restaurants, of course.
The difference between podcasting and just walking around talking to yourself out loud is remembering to push the record button. All the people who looked at me as if I were crazy this morning were completely justified.
Via curry.com via 1938 news via valleywag (so it’s gotta be true): Revver’s circling the toilet bowl. No surprise. The only way to make money in vlogging is in pre- or post-roll ads and getting paid per view/download. Revver’s got a one frame ad at the end which the viewer has to click for the ar-teest to get paid.
Seriously, who the hell ever clicks on an ad on purpose?
Recently my boss was talking to someone from Microsoft Japan who verified the commonly-given advice to wait until SP1 is out before upgrading to Vista. They’re not even using it internally at Microsoft yet because there are too many bugs.